Book Coming Out Soon

Several of you have asked about this, and sure enough - it's going to happen!

A book of 75 Hymn Lines 

is coming out in the next few weeks. 

It is supposed to be ready to order for Christmas gifts 

to be delivered in plenty of time!

I will let you know as soon as it is available, get you order-info, etc.
I'm pretty excited about it... and hope lots of you will want to buy copies as gifts!
I'm not sure about the exact price yet, but I'm assured it will be reasonable! ($12-15?)
It will be the size of a hymnal, soft-cover... not hard-bound.
It includes Hymn Lines from 75 different hymns.

"I see his hand of mercy. I hear his voice of cheer."

Hymn: “He Lives” – Words and Music by Alfred Ackley (1887-1960)
Tune: ACKLEY

This is another one of those lively little gospel songs whose texts sometimes get glided over. 6/8 is wonderful time signature for skating rink songs, but not always for church songs!

Tucked into the second half of the first stanza of this hymn, we are reminded what the hand of Jesus does for us… and what the sound of his voice can accomplish.

The hand of mercy: Similar to “I was sinking deep in sin” (another 6/8 hymn by the way!), this merciful hand of Jesus reaches down and pulls us up out of the quagmire of sin… the quicksand that wants to suck us further into itself. We’ve all been there – some of us up to our knees… others up to their eyeballs. It’s that merciful, undeserved rescue that matters most to those of us who have been there. “I cannot get myself out of this mess,” is the last sentence out of our mouth when suddenly we are freed from the clutches of that which would be our undoing.

The voice of cheer: Another hymn asks, “Who can cheer the heart like Jesus?” The answer, of course, is nobody! And on our way up from the sinking sand… the hell-hole we may have dug for ourselves… not only do we feel his hand of mercy, but we also hear his familiar, welcoming voice. As his sheep, we are keenly aware of the sound of his voice (John 10:27), and it is not a voice of condemnation [as in “How did you get yourself into this mess anyhow?”]; rather it is a cheering-on voice saying, “You can do better than this. I know who you really can be.” As a parent in the bleachers, he shouts, “You can do it, kid.”

A hand reaching out in mercy – a voice cheering us on. What more could we want?

Joel Raney’s arrangement of this hymn

"Weep o'er the erring one, lift up the fallen."

"Good Samaritan" - Francois-Leon Sicard

Hymn: “Rescue the Perishing” – Fanny Crosby (1820-1915)

Tune: RESCUE

This simple hymnline lifted from an old familiar gospel song is a pretty good description of what it means to be compassionate.

I grew up in a church where we sang this one briskly like a John Philip Sousa march. Until I used David Schwoebel’s setting of it near the end of my full-time music ministry, I had never paid much attention to the text. That is one of our ‘sins against the hymnal’: we just don’t take note of the words.

Fanny Crosby definitely had a way with words, and hidden deep within many of her gospel-songs we find these kernels of truth that help us understand certain of aspects of our faith put into words that we can understand more clearly if we take the time to zero-in on the separate phrases – like this one.

Weeping over those whose lives have gone wrong, who have stumbled and fallen, whose blumbers have sent them down a negative pathway – that’s how the Spirit of Christ within us reacts; we feel compassion on those struggling ones.

But for compassion to be effective, we must move beyond the feelings to action. We have to stop what we’re doing and give them a hand; we have to lift up those over whom we weep.

If you need a story to help you understand this concept, read Jesus’ parable of the Good Samaritan in Luke 10. Lots of people saw the down-and-out ditched man, saying to themselves, “Bless his heart.” But the man from Samaria had compassion on him and did something about it.

May this hymnline prompt us to practice compassion – not as a feeling, but as a natural active response.

Hear familiar hymn sung by men’s group

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=m_e4RXHF6Yk

"Let us hope and trust, let us watch and pray, and labor till the Master comes."

Hymn: “To the Work” – Fanny J. Crosby (1820-1915)

Tune: TOILING ON

We don’t sing this hymn much anymore in any denomination, but I definitely grew up on it as did many of you. I’m using the last line of the refrain as the hymn-line, but the returning theme in Fanny Crosby’s text is the message that “Salvation is free!” That phrase ends three of the four common stanzas printed in most hymnals.

MY favorite of the stanzas is:

            To the work! To the work!” Let the hungry be fed.

            To the fountain of life let the weary be led.

            In the cross and its banner our glory shall be

            While we herald the tidings, “Salvation is free!”

This call to get off our backsides and get on with our calling(s) is a strong one, and it emphasizes the social message of the gospel (feeding the hungry/poor) and the evangelistic message of leading weary souls to the fountain of life… the cross whose banner flies above our troops as we march through the streets announcing the good news that salvation is without cost to the one who believes it… yet at great cost to the One who provides it.

It doesn’t happen as much now, but in addition to a lunch break, workers were given two breaks during the day – one in the morning and one in the afternoon; for many, these were ‘smoke breaks,’ but I won’t go there this time! When those breaks ended, the boss/foreman/office manager would say, ‘Back to work now,” and the day’s tasks would resume. The first line of each of this hymn’s stanzas could be “Back to work! Back to work!” 

On the spiritual side of life in our toiling for the kingdom, we need to be singing our way unbegrudgingly through Tuesday with today’s hymn-line: Let us hope and trust, let us watch and pray, and labor till the Master comes.